The EHC annual review timeline
An annual review is a clock the school runs on the local authority's behalf. These are the dates the regulations actually set, and the ones that are convention.
How often must an EHC plan be reviewed?
The local authority must review the plan at least every twelve months. In practice the meeting is usually held around ten months after the plan was made or last reviewed, which leaves the authority time to make and communicate its decision inside the twelve. The duty sits with the authority, but where the child attends a school the authority normally asks the school to arrange the meeting and prepare the report.
When must advice be circulated before the meeting?
At least two weeks before the meeting. SEND Regulations 2014 reg 20(4) requires the authority to obtain advice and information from everyone invited, and to circulate that advice to all of them at least two weeks ahead. This is the deadline most often missed, because it depends on other people having replied — which is why the request usually has to go out well before the two weeks begin.
When should professionals and the family be asked for their advice?
There is no statutory date for the ask itself — only for the circulation two weeks before. The widely used convention is to ask professionals about ten weeks ahead and the family about eight, so their views are in the papers you circulate rather than arriving after them. Treat those two as planning dates rather than legal ones: the enforceable deadline is reg 20(4).
When must the report go out, and who must receive it?
Within two weeks of the meeting, and it must go to everyone who was invited under reg 20(2) — not the local authority alone. Reg 20(9) is explicit about this, and the Code says the same in its own words at 9.176. The invitee list is the parent or young person, a representative of the school, an authority officer, a health representative and a social care representative, so a report sent only to the authority has reached one of five.
Who writes the report — the school or the authority?
Where the child attends a school, reg 20(7) has the authority ask the head teacher to prepare the written report with its recommendations. Reg 20(8) covers the other case: where the pupil does not attend a school of the kind reg 20(12) describes, the authority prepares it instead. If you are unsure which applies, ask the authority in writing rather than assuming — the answer decides who is accountable for the deadline.
What happens after the meeting?
The authority decides whether to maintain the plan as it is, amend it, or cease to maintain it, and must tell the parent or young person within four weeks of the meeting. CoP 9.176 sets out that sequence. The decision is the authority's; the school's contribution is the report and the evidence behind it.
Striova keeps a school's SEN register, its graduated-approach cycles and its costed provision in one place, and produces the paperwork in the layout a local authority asks for.
General information about the SEND system in England, not legal advice, and not advice about provision for any individual pupil. Where a page names a regulation or a paragraph of the SEND Code of Practice, read it alongside the source.